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Stack Overflow is almost dead

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Re: Stack Overflow is almost dead

#141

Post by surgical_fire »

zahlman wrote: post #110
NBJack wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Question closed; here's a link to another one that sounds vaguely related but doesn't actually address your problem. But seriously, I'd love to see some sentiment analysis of the SO corpus classifying tone by tag.

"Having your problem addressed" is not a valid reason to post on Stack Overflow. You are expected before posting to have done enough analysis to the point where if your question is answered, you can solve the underlying problem yourself. When you are linked to a duplicate, it's because the person doing so believes in good faith that, to the extent that you have a question that meets the site's standards, answers to t…

> "Having your problem addressed" is not a valid reason to post on Stack Overflow. You are expected before posting to have done enough analysis to the point where if your question is answered, you can solve the underlying problem yourself.

If I can solve the problem myself, why do you think I would ask a question?

It may sound a silly question, but what you are describing is the reason why I never actively interacted with SO (never asked, answered, nor upvoted). Either what I was looking for was already there, or I completely ignored the site.

Maybe it is the reason why it is dying. It's just not that useful after all.

Re: Stack Overflow is almost dead

#142

Post by Buttons840 »

irrational wrote: post #75

> 2014: questions started to decline, which was also when Stack Overflow significantly improved moderator efficiency. From then, questions were closed faster, many more were closed, and “low quality” questions were removed more efficiently. This tallies with my memory of feeling that site moderators had gone on a power trip by closing legitimate questions. I stopped asking questions around this time because the site…

For a time the "let's interact with people and talk about cool things" group and the "let's build the ultimate knowledge base" group had their incentives aligned.

Then, with better moderator tools, the "ultimate knowledge base" group set out to achieve the ultimate knowledge base by reducing the amount of people who were just there to talk.

Re: Stack Overflow is almost dead

#143

Post by kurtis_reed »

A sociological case study. Legit founders, a fruitful niche, immense value. Growth, politics, corporatization. They did so many things right, then so many things wrong.

If it were up to me, moderation would have been overhauled. But it wasn't up to me.

Re: Stack Overflow is almost dead

#144

Post by slyfox125 »

zahlman wrote: post #110
NBJack wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Question closed; here's a link to another one that sounds vaguely related but doesn't actually address your problem. But seriously, I'd love to see some sentiment analysis of the SO corpus classifying tone by tag.

"Having your problem addressed" is not a valid reason to post on Stack Overflow. You are expected before posting to have done enough analysis to the point where if your question is answered, you can solve the underlying problem yourself. When you are linked to a duplicate, it's because the person doing so believes in good faith that, to the extent that you have a question that meets the site's standards, answers to t…

Even if you - and the stance SO takes/took - are correct, that doesn't erase the fact that the decorum is unpalatable to a vast majority of the user-base.

Being correct does not necessarily engender popularity or success. Often, humility, patience, and kindness are key.

Re: Stack Overflow is almost dead

#145

Post by zahlman »

surgical_fire wrote: post #141
zahlman wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Having your problem addressed" is not a valid reason to post on Stack Overflow. You are expected before posting to have done enough analysis to the point where if your question is answered, you can solve the underlying problem yourself. When you are linked to a duplicate, it's because the person doing so believes in good faith that, to the extent that you have a question that meets the site's standards, answers to t…

> "Having your problem addressed" is not a valid reason to post on Stack Overflow. You are expected before posting to have done enough analysis to the point where if your question is answered, you can solve the underlying problem yourself. If I can solve the problem myself, why do you think I would ask a question? It may sound a silly question, but what you are describing is the reason why I never actively interacted…

>>You are expected before posting to have done enough analysis to the point where if your question is answered, you can solve the underlying problem yourself.

>If I can solve the problem myself, why do you think I would ask a question?

You are expected to be able to analyze the problem to the point where you have one specific question, get the answer, and solve the problem now that you have the answer.

That is: we will not do the analysis for you. We will fill in the gap in your knowledge. But you have to figure out where that gap is.

> Either what I was looking for was already there

The goal is to maximize the chance of this (and that you find what you're looking for promptly). When you don't find it, you can help by contributing the question part of what's missing. But, in turn, this is supposed to improve the chance that the next person can promptly find your question - and understand it, and be confident that you have the same question, and read the answer, and go on to solve a potentially very different problem.

Re: Stack Overflow is almost dead

#146

Post by zahlman »

slyfox125 wrote: post #144
zahlman wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Having your problem addressed" is not a valid reason to post on Stack Overflow. You are expected before posting to have done enough analysis to the point where if your question is answered, you can solve the underlying problem yourself. When you are linked to a duplicate, it's because the person doing so believes in good faith that, to the extent that you have a question that meets the site's standards, answers to t…

Even if you - and the stance SO takes/took - are correct, that doesn't erase the fact that the decorum is unpalatable to a vast majority of the user-base. Being correct does not necessarily engender popularity or success. Often, humility, patience, and kindness are key.

My experience has overwhelmingly been that people object to being told that they can't just ask the question they want - not to the specific words used.

We don't allow anyone to use insults; we expect each other to be patient; we use our "please"s and "thank you"s in comments (even as we remove them from questions) - and if you see otherwise, please flag it; moderators take code of conduct violations seriously.

But none of this seems to make a difference. And people come to the site with expectations about politeness that simply aren't conducive to getting people to stop doing things they aren't supposed to do:

https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/366889 https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/368072 https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/373801 https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/334870

Meanwhile, a major reason why people aren't required to explain in a comment why they downvoted a question, is because of the history we've had with downright vitriolic replies from OPs who seem uninterested in the rules:

https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/357436 https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/352575

Rudeness happens all around, really:

https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/326494

Related: https://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/309018/523612

(And, of course, all of this really blows up once assumptions start getting made about who is or isn't especially sensitive: https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/366665)

Re: Stack Overflow is almost dead

#147

Post by zahlman »

bdangubic wrote: post #140
zahlman wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And as far as I can see, it is dying. And why are you the one who gets to make this judgment? > So on the one hand you find it okay to delete old questions, and on the other hand you find it okay to not add new questions. But it's not dying. Yes. You write this as though you think there is a contradiction here. I genuinely don't understand why. There is no contradiction here. QuickDraw wasn't "injured" when it lost…

And why are you the one who gets to make this judgment? the reality makes this judgment. something that was worth billions of dollars could probably be bought for $50m (this is too much…). a definition of dead

I don't think that is relevant, either. Nobody who asks or answers a question on Stack Overflow, nor comments, nor edits an existing post, does so with the specific intent of increasing the market cap of Stack Exchange, Inc.

Re: Stack Overflow is almost dead

#148

Post by surgical_fire »

zahlman wrote: post #145
surgical_fire wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Having your problem addressed" is not a valid reason to post on Stack Overflow. You are expected before posting to have done enough analysis to the point where if your question is answered, you can solve the underlying problem yourself. If I can solve the problem myself, why do you think I would ask a question? It may sound a silly question, but what you are describing is the reason why I never actively interacted…

>>You are expected before posting to have done enough analysis to the point where if your question is answered , you can solve the underlying problem yourself. >If I can solve the problem myself, why do you think I would ask a question? You are expected to be able to analyze the problem to the point where you have one specific question, get the answer, and solve the problem now that you have the answer . That is: we…

> You are expected to be able to analyze the problem to the point where you have one specific question, get the answer, and solve the problem now that you have the answer.

> That is: we will not do the analysis for you. We will fill in the gap in your knowledge.

I see. That makes more sense, I misinterpreted your original reply.

That said, many times I did find the specific question I had, but the question was closed as duplicate (or whatever jargon you use), but the existing answered question was for whatever reason not exactly what I was looking for. Not really encouraging for me to interact with the site, and would probably just sink my time furter.

> The goal is to maximize the chance of this (and that you find what you're looking for promptly).

This used to be more common, many years ago. I can't orecise why, but it has been a while that I found the answer I was looking for on SO.

> When you don't find it, you can help by contributing the question part of what's missing. But, in turn, this is supposed to improve the chance that the next person can promptly find your question - and understand it, and be confident that you have the same question, and read the answer, and go on to solve a potentially very different problem.

I suppose I could. But asking a meaningful question takes effort, and I have no idea if the powers that be will share my idea that the question is meaningful, or if it will be marked as a duplicate to some similar issue. Not exactly encouraging to participation.

Re: Stack Overflow is almost dead

#149

Post by jemmyw »

zahlman wrote: post #110
NBJack wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Question closed; here's a link to another one that sounds vaguely related but doesn't actually address your problem. But seriously, I'd love to see some sentiment analysis of the SO corpus classifying tone by tag.

"Having your problem addressed" is not a valid reason to post on Stack Overflow. You are expected before posting to have done enough analysis to the point where if your question is answered, you can solve the underlying problem yourself. When you are linked to a duplicate, it's because the person doing so believes in good faith that, to the extent that you have a question that meets the site's standards, answers to t…

The last time I used it I was asking a math question that was somewhat beyond me. I'd already spent hours researching it. Part of the problem was I knew I didn't know the right terminology but I could describe the problem in detail. I asked on SO, got one slightly snarky comment that answered the wrong problem. It did give me a clue to the right wording to look for though so in a way I got my answer. But the general attitude, and your attitude, is "why are you asking this question?"

SO didn't come about until I was already working as a programmer and I'm more used to using docs or reading source to find answers. I participated a lot on language specific mailing groups and IRC at one point and they were much friendlier. At least I treated no question as a stupid question.

Re: Stack Overflow is almost dead

#150

Post by Gigachad »

NBJack wrote: post #92
awesome_dude wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The next AI totally needs to be more snarky to make it feel more like we're dealing with actual "thinksperts", people that think they are experts even if their answers are demonstrably wrong.

"You are Comic Book Guy from The Simpsons. You are very knowledgeable in the _____ language; in fact, you believe you are the foremost expert on it. You have taken time from your busy schedule to help the unwashed masses by answering the following question..."

>Oh, the pain... the sheer agony of having to explain basic React concepts to someone who likely thinks JSX is a new boy band. But fine. For the sake of humanity—or at least to preserve what little remains of good developer practices—I shall lower myself to answer your question.

Hooks and components in React are as different as a limited-edition issue of Radioactive Man and the garbage they stuff in the Sunday comics.

[...]

If you're writing React without understanding this distinction, please, for the love of all that is unholy in Springfield, step away from the keyboard and go read the official React docs. Twice. Maybe thrice.

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